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Worm Farms
An alternative and fun way of reducing your kitchen scraps is to build a worm farm.
Why do we need worms? If there were no worms, 30cm of rubbish would build up on the earth’s surface every year! We need worms to break down things that were once living so their goodness/nutrients can be recycled back into the environment to help more plants grow! Food scraps cause problems in landfills because there is not enough oxygen for them to compost naturally and they break down in a way that releases dangerous greenhouse gases. Land fills also cause other problems like polluting our waterways. It’s much better to compost our food scraps using worms and recycle all the good nutrients back into the soil.
Amazing worm facts:
If you are doing worm composting, you have to have the right sort of worms (eg: stripy Tiger worms!) because normal earthworms may get sick or die in a worm farm (it is not their natural home). If you provide ideal conditions, your worm population will grow and grow – they can double their numbers every 2 months or so! You could even end up selling worms as well as the worm ‘rum’ or worm ‘wees’ as a fertiliser. How to look after your worms: How to be good worm parents! Worms can eat anything that was once alive! Please don’t feed them things like glass, plastic or tin foil they won’t be able to eat it! They love leftover fruit and vegetable scraps, tea bags, half eaten sandwiches, they can also eat paper if it’s ripped up into little pieces, and they can even eat ice cream! Worms can eat their own weight of foods scraps per day! Imagine if you could eat your own weight in food a day! You would have to eat a lot more than you do now! The secret to a non-smelly worm bin is to feed them little and often! If they dry out they will die, if it’s too wet they will drown…Don’t water too much in the winter, otherwise your worms might freeze! Likewise if they get too hot they will die, that’s why you can’t feed them grass clippings because they heat up too much and your worms might cook!
Make Your Own Worm Farm
Built entirely from reused and recycled materials. You will require:
Operating Instructions for your Worm Farm 1. Soak the newspapers in water and stuff all three tyres full, one sheet at a time 2. Place the corrugated iron on top of the bricks or telephone books, wrap it in silage/ heavy plastic so that the liquid doesn't touch the metal. 3. Put the first stuffed tyre on top of the corrugated iron. Put an old sack or carpet inside to make a sort of nest for the new worms 4. Fill this bottom tyre with bedding material (i.e, horse manure, rotting pea straw, compost) and then tip the worms in. Cover immediately with a thick layer of wet newspaper. Now put the other two stuffed tyres on top. 5. Feed regularly with kitchen scraps by lifting up the newspaper. Make sure the farm is kept moist to the touch. Always replace the newspaper to keep it dark. 6. Keep the worms and bedding covered with damp newspaper, plus an old sack or carpet (also damp). Place your lid on top of the tyre stack to prevent fly problems. 7. As the tyre stack fills up you can slide out the bottom tyre and empty it of worm castings/vermicast. The paper in the tyre will probably be full of worms and can be replaced as is, used in your garden or compost heap or given to friends to start new worm farms. 8. The empty tyre is now ready for reuse - stuff with fresh, moist newspapers and place on TOP of the tyre stack. 9. Regularly empty the pot of worm rum - dilute 8-1 with water and spray or poor on to and around your special plants. 10. The nutrients from your kitchen scraps are now available for you to use in your organic garden and your worm population will have increased remarkably. 11. Worms suitable for worm farm can be found in animal manure or rotting pea straw. Thanks to Wastebusters Trust Canterbury for the information above.
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Waste Management Wairarapa, PO Box 444, Masterton New Zealand |
